personalities clash, history’s narrative grows beyond multifaceted and becomes multidimensional, if you will. So, if you want to get comfortable with history, don’t try too hard to fit any person into any single category.
Verifying virtue
History celebrates the strong, especially those who wielded military or political power. Sometimes, it seems to be exclusively about those who fought — for territory, for defense, for wealth, and so on. Yet there have also been fighters for ideals. Too often, peaceful idealists are left out of history’s stories. The exceptions are idealist leaders whose courage resulted in political or cultural change. Prime examples include the following two men:
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869–1948): Known as the Mahatma, or great soul, he fought discrimination against Indian people in South Africa and then, after returning to his home country, fought for India’s independence from Great Britain — without striking a literal blow. Gandhi adopted the idea of nonviolent civil disobedience espoused by American writer Henry David Thoreau (1817–62) and in turn inspired American civil-rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–68): King was inspired by Mahatma Gandhi to use nonviolent protest against racial discrimination in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. He played a major role in winning popular support for the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964, legislation that outlawed segregation by race in schools, in the workplace, and at public facilities.
Gandhi and King brought about change and stirred resistance. Each was human, and humans are flawed. Gandhi has been accused, posthumously, of racism toward blacks during the 21 years that he lived in South Africa before returning to India. While King was still alive, the Federal Bureau of Investigation accused him of having extramarital affairs. Yet each man sought to make the world better, and both arguably succeeded to some extent. Had their efforts been entirely in vain, Gandhi and King may have been seen as ineffectual dreamers. (Turn to Chapter 22 for more about Gandhi and King.)
Tracking the Centuries
About 4.5 billion BC: Earth forms.
Maybe 4 million BC: Early hominids (humanlike ancestors) walk on their hind legs. (Some evidence points to evidence of even earlier apelike bipeds.)
About 700,000 BC: Homo erectus walks out of Africa.
About 60,000 BC: Human beings leave behind early examples of art.
479–323 BC: The Classical Greek era gives rise to democracy.
1605: The Gunpowder Plot against England’s King James I is foiled when conspirator Guy Fawkes is caught with explosives below the assembly hall of Parliament.
1789: George Washington is elected president of the United States of America.
1948: An assassin kills Mahatma Gandhi.
1968: An assassin kills Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Part 2
Finding Strength in Numbers
IN THIS PART …
Visit the earliest cities, seeing how ancient people learned to work together for mutual benefit and how defensive alliances, commerce, and conquest spread written language, law, and new ways of thinking.
Follow the rise of the Roman Republic, which grew into an empire whose influence is still felt today, and see how other ancient empires rose and fell.
Discover how the Middle Ages, an unsettled time of migrations and regional conflicts, set the stage for modern nations.
See how the rise of Islam reshaped vast parts of Asia, Africa, and even Europe, and how the Crusades and the Silk Road fed Western appetites for trade with India and East Asia.
Follow new sea routes that enabled a handful of European powers to claim pieces of every other habitable continent as components of worldwide empires and get a glimpse of how colonial residents chafed at foreign control.
Find out about the push and pull of globalism as imperial powers, eventually enabled by technologies such as the steam engine and the telegraph, extended their reach even while subject people fought to break their ties with European overlords.
Chapter 4
Getting Civilized
IN THIS CHAPTER
Human beings lived without cities — with none of what people today call civilization — much longer than people have lived with cities and civilization. Archaeologists can’t find much evidence that anything that could be called a city existed until at least 10,000 years ago, although there are older ruins that show the beginnings of cities. The people of 20,000 years ago may have thought about large permanent settlements as impractical — that is, if the idea ever occurred to them — because the way to get food reliably was to remain mobile. If you wanted to eat, you went where the plants were thriving, where the shellfish clung to the river rocks, and where herds and flocks migrated. You followed food sources season by season, and as you wandered, you took care not to merge your band of wanderers with other bands. It wasn’t a good idea to have too many mouths to feed.
But even before they fully adopted agriculture, as early as 11,000 years back, humans got together in great numbers for impressive building projects. The ruins at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey give evidence. More than 200 T-shape stone pillars, each about 20 feet high, are arranged in 20 circles. There are no nearby ruins of dwellings, so researchers think the circles may have been a site of worship or ritual burial for a hunter-gatherer society. Ruins at Tel Qarmel, in northern Syria, also include stone towers that may be older than farming. That fact makes such finds more impressive — and more mysterious.
When the practice of farming did get people to settle down, communities followed, and grew — villages to towns, towns to cities. By 10,000 years ago, Jericho, a city on today’s Palestinian West Bank, was either welcoming travelers who happened by their oasis or chasing them away with rocks and spears thrown from the town’s protective walls and tower.
Archaeologists know quite a bit about early civilizations, especially
